Free Republic

When it comes to our origins, there are two basic possibilities: either reality is the product of intentional design, or it arose through unguided natural processes. Every person, consciously or not, adopts one of these views, and the choice is foundational. It shapes how we interpret the world, whether we see purpose in life, and how we understand its meaning. Given its significance, this question deserves careful and sustained attention.Yet most of us do not approach it as a blank slate. Our culture and educational institutions have largely made the choice for us. Historically, belief in a creator was the...

MILAN (AP) — A wildlife photographer stumbled upon one of the oldest and largest known collections of dinosaur footprints, dating back about 210 million years to the Triassic Period, high in an Italian national park near the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympic venue of Bormio, officials announced Tuesday. The discovery in the Stelvio National Park was striking for the sheer number of footprints, estimated at as many as 20,000 over some five kilometers (three miles), and the location near the Swiss border, once a prehistoric coastal area, that has never previously yielded dinosaur tracks, experts said. “This time reality really...

For some scientists, there’s no place more romantic than a cheese cave. When Tufts University biologist Benjamin Wolfe, then a biology postdoc, shepherded his colleague Rachel to a surprise rendezvous with her boyfriend in a Vermont cheese cave, a marriage proposal ensued. And, according to Wolfe and his colleagues’ new paper in Current Biology, so did a discovery about evolution. Some cheese varieties are ripened in caves where they attract microbes—yeast, bacteria, and fungi (molds)—which form a rind on the cheese surface. Molds like Penicillium (the same genus that produces the human antibiotic, but a different species) spur the ripening...

We marked last week the death at age 97 of James D. Watson (1928 – 2025), co-discoverer with Francis Crick of the structure of DNA. Reflecting on his life leads to contradictory responses: a hero of science, whose work led to insights pointing to life’s intelligent design, he was also a bigoted atheist and champion of pseudoscientific racism.The names Watson and Crick are almost as iconic as the DNA double helix that they elucidated in 1953, for which they won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Maurice Wilkins. One discovery led to another: Crick’s sequence hypothesis...

A new volume represents a very timely reprint of St. George Mivart’s provocatively titled On the Genesis of Species (New York: Appleton, 1871). The general editor of the Inkwell Press, James Barham, announces in his introduction that further forgotten classics in the same genre will presently follow. The text presents the second edition (slightly revised to take account of Darwin’s Descent of Man published earlier in the same year).Mivart (1827-1900) throughout his life remained something of a thorn in Darwin’s side, joining sides with Harvard professor Asa Gray, geologist Sir Charles Lyell, Alfred Russel Wallace, and many others who argued...

...Beginning by setting parameters to strip away ideologically driven answers, Smith asked Grok to apply only strict logic, mathematical probability, and observational science in its answers....

The modern potato exists thanks to a 9-million-year-old hybrid between tomato-like and potato-like plants. Credit: Shutterstock ========================================================================== Scientists have finally uncovered the ancient secret behind the potato’s origin—and it involves an unexpected genetic romance. About 9 million years ago, a wild interbreeding event occurred between a tomato-like plant and a potato-relative in the Andes. This rare hybridization gave rise to the first tuber-forming plants. Ancient Hybrid Sparked the Potato’s Origins An international team of scientists has discovered that the modern potato originated from a natural crossbreeding event between tomato plants and potato-like wild species in South America around 9 million...

Few events in all of history have been as maligned and misunderstood as the 1925 Scopes Trial, often called the most famous court trial in American history. The common view of the trial is that it was about religious belief pitted against scientific fact. John Scopes, as a teacher educated in biology, taught evolution [actually his major in geology with a minor in law]. His nemesis was William Jennings Bryan, whom evolutionists portrayed as an ignorant fundamentalist accepting every word of the Bible as literal truth. Bryan purportedly aimed to outlaw the teaching of science in public schools and advocated...

Over the past year, my husband and I have watched both film versions of 'Inherit the Wind'. I would like to read a good book about the Scopes trial, free of the dramatization and fictionalization. Can anyone suggest what they think is the best book? Thanks.

Renowned Yale computer scientist David Gelernter claims that he is abandoning Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Gelernter, who formerly served as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, published a column earlier this year detailing his move away from evolutionary theory. The column, which was titled “Giving Up Darwin,” provides Gelernter’s arguments against Darwinism. Darwin’s theory predicts that new life forms evolve gradually from old ones in a constantly branching, spreading tree of life. Those brave new Cambrian creatures must therefore have had Precambrian predecessors, similar but not quite as fancy and sophisticated. They could not have all blown out...

Paleontologists have described a new species of the extant bee genus Leioproctus from a fossil specimen found in southern New Zealand.Named Leioproctus barrydonovani, the new species lived during the Middle Miocene epoch, some 14.6 million years ago.The ancient insect belongs to Leioproctus, a large genus within the plasterer bee family Colletidae.Extant Leioproctus species are small, black, hairy bees between 4 and 16 mm in length.They are found in Australasia and South America, and include the most common native bees in New Zealand...The specimen (total length of the body is 6.4 mm) was recovered from the Middle Miocene deposits of the...

The strange beliefs of Nicholas Kristof A couple of years ago, to celebrate the Catholic feast of the Assumption, Nicholas Kristof wrote a column called “Believe it or Not” (New York Times, 8-15-03), in which he scoffed at the naïve religious beliefs of Americans and in particular at the absurdity of believing in the Virgin Birth of Christ. This year, to celebrate Christmas, I wish to reply to his charges. In publishing his column, Kristof showed considerable bravery. Not by attacking religious believers (which is mere political correctness) but by exposing his own beliefs, which are touchingly old-fashioned and naive....

It’s high time for Protestant denominations to take a firm and authoritative stance on reproductive technology. Since the birth of “Baby M” by in vitro fertilization (IVF) in 1978, reproductive technologies have outpaced public understanding, policy development, and theological reflection...By 2030, it is likely that they will be well on their way to developing artificial wombs for conception through birth. American Evangelicals haven’t kept up. Indeed, most Protestant denominations in our country still lack a biblically informed stance on childbearing, infertility, and the most basic reproductive technology, such as IVF, surrogacy, and stem cell research. Even fewer have a coherent...

[Catholic Caucus] Pope Pius XI refuted Darwinism 100 years ago, but his lessons have not been learnedIn assessing natural selection, spontaneous generation, and the evolutionary mechanisms expounded by Charles Darwin, Pope Pius XI found they fail under scrutiny, highlighting gaps and debunking falsehoods created by its proponents to prop up the evolutionary theory.Editor’s note: This article is Part 2 of a four-part study of Pope Pius XI’s understanding of the Catholic doctrine of creation as opposed to the modern scientific proposition of the evolution of mankind. Part 1 can be found HERE.(Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation) — Having...

An evolutionary biologist has challenged the long-held theory that suggests the first humans emerged from African. Dr Huan Shi, from China, proposed evolution began in East Asia where fossils predating the Africa timeline have been found. Evidence of genetic diversity is at the heart of his 'out of East Asia' theory, based on a concept called 'maximum genetic diversity' (MGD) that states complex species are more likely to have less genetic diversity.

“Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” Genesis 3:22From the days of Adam right down to our own time, the devilish belief that man is God has danced across history, seducing millions in its path:“In this way, even by magic, which is…a second idolatry, wherein they pretend that after death they become demons, just as they were supposed in the first and literal idolatry to become gods.” Tertullian...

With 60 razor-sharp teeth and jaws so powerful they could crush a car, the King of the Dinosaurs would already have been a terrifying sight.But if that wasn't enough, the T. Rex may have been 70 per cent heavier than previously thought – weighing up to 15 tonnes – according to a study...The palaeontologists found that the largest known T. Rex fossils probably fall in the 99th percentile – representing the top 1 per cent of body size – but finding one would require excavating fossils for another 1,000 years...Meanwhile, a separate study suggests that the T. Rex may also...

Hominids sucgh as the Neanderthal should be an evolutionists last choice for a 'human ancestor'

Back in 2016, The Guardian ran a glowing piece for the 40th anniversary of the publication of Richard Dawkins’s influential book The Selfish Gene, which argued that organisms (like humans) are merely the vehicles that genes use to survive and propagate themselves. The author of the piece, evolutionary biologist Adam Rutherford, wrote that the book’s fame would last forever, for “as long as we study life, it will be read.” Yet even in 2016, Dawkins’s selfish gene model had begun to come under attack from other scientists. Since then, the cracks in the theory have grown. Leading the charge against...

Of Homo sapiens, Darwin made only a passing mention on the third-to-last page of the tome, noting coyly that "light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." That's it. That is all he wrote about the dawning of the single most consequential species on the planet.